Isabelle Eberhardt's Nomadic Cosmopolitanism

This article offers a conception of nomadic cosmopolitanism based on a reading of Isabelle Eberhardt's representations of the Sahara in her fragmented life writings. It draws attention to the ways in which Eberhardt, as a displaced and eccentric figure, invites us to critically engage with the conceptual entanglements between nomadism and cosmopolitanism. The article concludes by arguing that the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world of empires was a historical site in which cosmopolitanism involved the appropriation of spaces, the performance of multiple identities, and the exploitation of social relations.